The Wire recently featured Sasu Ripatti / Vladislav Delay on their cover. I'd never heard of him, but his studio is phenomally hot, from the lovely minimal white racks full of analogue gear (a Cwejman S1, Moogs, Vermona, Sherman etc) to the Japanese-style low-level desk, to the... well, what is that on his desk on the cover? (Answers, courtesy of Joker, Anon and Aaron, are that the little screen is an RTW Vectorscope, the green knob is a Crane Song Avocet monitor controller, and the wood-sided knob box is an Ursa Major Space Station reverb.) Lots more to read about Sasu at Swim Industries and The Music of Sound.

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

The flat box is an Ursa Major Space station, but I have no idea what the little screen is for...my guess is that it's a spectrometer of some sort.

He's one of my all time favorite electronic artists. As Vladislav Delay - Multila. Anima is ok.As Uusitalo - Tulenkantaja. As Luomo - Vocalcity.I recommend all of the above if you like electronic music. It never bores me. That's a good article too.

some reviewer once remarked, that saying that uusitalo - vapaa muurari live is "techno" is like saying that miles davis is "jazz". i think that fits my view of the album quite well, if it isn't a masterpiece it's pretty damn close to that.

vocal city is absolutely amazing too - the later luomo stuff doesn't do it for me but that one rocks.

well, in this case I must admit the expensive and exotic gear is totally justified 'cos this man has made very good albums (vocalcity, for instance)now I'd like to see Isolee's studio. anyone's got a clue what he uses?

RE-201, Manley Slam, Manley Vari-Mu, Manley Massive Passive, Cranesong HEDD, couple Weiss units. There is a Vermona spring reverb next to space echo and also a boss delay/reverb pedal (rv-3 or 5). Moogerfoogers can be seen in the background with eventide evenet remote. There is also more moogs, vermo na drm1, se omega 8, and some modular synth and step seq.

BTW The step sequencer seen in the other shots is the legendary SND SAM-16, a piece of gear that figures very prominently in the work from most of the best e-music artists that came of age in the '90s, Sasu included. Getting the chance to use a SAM gives a new insight into where all those "supertracks" came from.

eah, when he recorded Vocalcity and Present Lover (my fav record of all time) as Luomo he wasn't using nearly as much stuff. I actually read many of interviews with him where he shunned gear talk altogether. I think he used an old beat version of Logic on a G4 along with an MPC, a ouple real nice mics and some effects to get his sound.

Now he's just like every other gear head and his Vladislav Delay records still sound like someone falling down the stairs in the dark...